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Jacob Boehme

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Jacob Boehme

Rudolf Steiner Archive Document

Lectures Section

This is an English translation First Edition of A lecture about
Jacob Boehme. It was given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin on January 9th
1913. This lecture is 7th of 14 lectures from a lecture series entitled,
Results of Spiritual Investigation, published in German as, Ergebnisse
der Geistesforschung.

By Rudolf Steiner

Translated by Margaret W. Barnetson
Bn 62.7; GA 62; CW 62

This is an English translation First Edition of A lecture about
Jacob Boehme. It was given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin on January 9th
1913. This lecture is 7th of 14 lectures from a lecture series entitled,
Results of Spiritual Investigation,
published in German as,
Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung.

This translation is presented here with the kind permission of the
Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung,
Dornach, Switzerland. From Bn 62.7, GA 62, CW 62.

This e.Text edition is provided through the wonderful work of:Various e.Text Transcribers

Thanks to an anonymous donation, this Lecture Series has been made available.

Jacob Boehme

AT
the point of time in modern spiritual evolution when we see the
dawn of the new world-conception breaking forth, at that time
in which we must record the great achievements of Kepler and
Galileo, in which Giordano Bruno, in a certain measure,
outlines the great problem of a modern world-conception,
— at this moment we meet the solitary thinker to whom the
present reflections shall be dedicated, the simple shoemaker of
Goerlitz, Jacob Boehme. He struggled with the highest problems
of existence in a way which can occupy our thinking and feeling
to this day in the deepest manner, and will probably occupy the
thinking and feeling of human beings for a long time to
come.

A
peculiar figure this Jacob Boehme, a figure who strove and
struggled in solitude, whereas elsewhere in the spiritual life
the single currents united to form a great comprehensive
tableau. And in a certain sense one might say that the
solitary striving of Jacob Boehme appears almost as
interesting, from a certain standpoint, as the flowing together
of the different points of view which meet us elsewhere in that
epoch. And then we see how, very strangely, what Jacob Boehme
found in his own solitary mind, even in his century, received
the greatest imaginable dissemination — the
greatest imaginable dissemination we may say, considering the
fact that we are dealing with a deeply significant spiritual
matter. Precisely through the manifestations of his
adversaries we see how far his influence extended after only a
few decades had passed since his death. Again and again, Jacob
Boehme was the object of appreciative and admiring, or
rejecting and ridiculing, contemplation. And when we observe
what came into being as his following, or as his
opposition, we have the impression that both the
adherents and the attackers knew they were dealing with a very
strange phenomenon.

This phenomenon is strange, especially to those who wish to
understand every personality that appears in the spiritual life
of humanity on the basis of the immediate conditions, so to
speak, of the age and the surroundings. We see, for instance,
how people try to understand Goethe by collecting all sorts of
details of his life, even the most unimportant, and believe
that by assembling these details they can acquire this or that
to explain his corresponding spiritual life. It is not possible
in this manner really to acquire much for the understanding of
Jacob Boehme. External influences are difficult to verify
through external science, and it is still harder to
understand how Jacob Boehme grew out of that which constituted
the spiritual life of his time.

Many, therefore, have professed the opinion that in Jacob
Boehme we have to do with a kind of spiritual meteor. All that
arose there, all that this personality had to give, appears as
if it had suddenly sprung up, revealing itself out of the
depths of his strange soul. Others then have tried to explain
that many a turn of expression, many a way of presenting his
ideas, shows similarity in words and turns of expression to the
formulae of the alchemists, or to some philosophical or other
tendencies that were still alive in his time. But whoever
enters more deeply into the whole mentality of Jacob Boehme
will find that such a procedure has hardly more value than if
one were to examine the “language” in connection
with an eminent personality, who, after all, must always
express himself in a language. For when Jacob Boehme makes use
of alchemistic formulae, or such things, it is only verbal
clothing. That which makes such an exceedingly powerful
impression, however, on one who seeks to understand him
presents itself with an originality such as is found only in
the very greatest minds.

In
contrast to this, there are a few clues which are not quite
compatible with modern thinking — with the modern
world-conception — but which, for the person who is
capable of entering into such things, throw light on how Jacob
Boehme was able to soar up to his high spiritual standpoint. In
order to connect our reflections with his life, to the extent
that it has a bearing here, we need mention only a few
biographical facts.

Jacob Boehme was the son of very poor parents and came from
Alt-Seidenberg in the vicinity of Goerlitz. He was born in
1575. In his youth he had to tend the cattle with other
village boys. As is apparent from this, he grew up in
complete poverty, and since a person growing up in this way
does not have any particular means of education, we shall find
it understandable that even as a boy of twelve or
thirteen years Jacob Boehme could hardly read and only barely
write. But another experience confronts us even during his
boyhood, of which a faithful biographer heard from him out of
his own mouth. We shall first tell this experience. As we have
said, it is not one of those things which are quite
intelligible to modern consciousness.

When Jacob Boehme was once tending the cattle with other
shepherd boys, he withdrew from the company of the boys and
climbed a moderately high mountain in the vicinity of his
native locality, the “Landskrone.” He declared that
he had seen there in the bright noontime something like an
entrance-gate into the mountain. He went inside and there found
a vessel, a kind of vat, filled with pure gold. That made such
an impression of fearful awe on his soul that he ran away and
retained only the memory of this peculiar experience. /

One
can, to be sure, speak of a “dream dreamed in the waking
state.” One may, for all that, grant the right to those
who are satisfied with such an explanation. But the
essential point is not whether one calls such an
occurrence a “dream,” or gives it another name, but
what it releases in the mind of the person who
“dreams” it, what effect it produces in the soul.
And from the way in which Jacob Boehme later told this
occurrence to his friend we see that it had engraved itself
deeply on his mind, that it had released significant forces in
his soul so that it had the highest psychological significance
for him.

Let
us, therefore, grant to the rationalists the right to
explain such an experience, which was in any case a
significant happening in Jacob Boehme's soul, in the way in
which they likewise wish to explain the event of the appearance
of Christ before Paul at Damascus. Only, an explanation which
resorts to these things must also admit that such significant
work as that of Paul, which is so intimately connected with
Christianity, proceeded from a “dream.”

Even the boy Jacob Boehme, when he had this experience, felt
something like the deepest stirring up of soul forces which are
otherwise not active in the soul. The important thing is this
inner releasing of deeper-lying forces of the soul. The
important thing is the testimony of such a fact which proves
that we have to do here with a human being who could descend to
a far greater profundity in his soul life than thousands and
thousands of others.

Another event of a similar nature must also be borne in mind,
of which we must again say that it remained so fixed in Jacob
Boehme's memory that the brightness and the significance of
this event shone over his whole life, in so far as this life
was an inner one.

In
his fourteenth year Jacob Boehme was sent to a shoemaker
as an apprentice and often had to stand guard, so to speak, in
his master's shop. He was not permitted to sell anything.
On one occasion — and this story, again, came from the
mouth of his loyal biographer, Abraham von Frankenberg —
an individuality who immediately made a singular impression on
Jacob Boehme came into the shop and wanted to buy shoes. But,
because the boy was forbidden to sell shoes, he said this to
the stranger. The latter offered him a high price and it came
about that the shoes were sold.

Then, however, the following took place, which remained in
Jacob Boehme's memory throughout his life. When the stranger
had departed and a short time had passed, Jacob Boehme heard
his name called: “Jacob, Jacob!” and when he went
out the stranger seemed to him even more singular than at
first. There was something sun-like, shining in his eyes and he
said words to him which sounded very strange: “Jacob, you
are now still small, but you will once become an entirely
different human being, about whom the world will break out in
amazement. But remain humble before your God and read the
Bible diligently. You will have to endure much persecution, but
be strong, for your God loves you and will be merciful to
you.” — Jacob Boehme regarded such an occurrence as
much more essential than any other, external biographic
experiences.

And
his biographer relates further how Jacob Boehme himself
told him the following: It was in the year 1600 when,
during seven days, Jacob Boehme felt as if withdrawn from
his physical body, felt as if he were in an entirely
different world, felt as if, with regard to his soul, he was
re-born.

We
have to do here — if one wants to call it that —
with a permanently abnormal condition of the soul. But Jacob
Boehme experienced this, his “re-birth,” also
simply more or less as something which could, according to his
conception, take place with a human soul. He did not become,
let us say, a visionary or a false idealist through this, nor
did he become an arrogant person, but continued to practice his
shoemaker's trade in all humility — or, we might say, in
all sobriety. And even the experience of the year 1600,
the withdrawal into another world, remained to him a phenomenon
of which he said to himself: “You have looked into a
kingdom of joy, into a kingdom of spiritual reality, but that
is a thing of the past.” And he continued to live
from day to clay pursuing his trade in his sober manner.

In
the year 1610 this experience of re-birth was repeated. He then
began to record what he had experienced in his states of
exaltation, since he felt called upon to do this. Thus, in 1612
his first work, The Dawn in Its Ascent, came into being,
later entitled Aurora. Regarding it, he said that he did
not write it down through his ordinary ego, but that it was
given to him word for word; that, in comparison with his
ordinary ego, he lived in a being which was encompassing, which
reached into all parts of the world and immersed itself in this
world.

To
be sure, the revelations did not do him much good. When several
people noticed what he had to say, what he had written down, a
few copies of the manuscript of Aurora were made and
circulated. The result was that Gregorius Richter, the deacon
of Goerlitz — where Jacob Boehme had meanwhile, in 1594,
established himself as shoemaker — railed at Jacob Boehme
from the pulpit and not only condemned his work, but also
succeeded in having him called before the council of the city
of Goerlitz. About this I will now simply repeat the words that
we know from his biographer. He relates that the verdict of the
council was that Jacob Boehme must be forbidden to write
further, for only those who were academicians were permitted to
write and Jacob Boehme was not an academician, but an idiot,
and must, therefore, refrain from writing!

Thus Jacob Boehme was branded as an idiot. And, since he was a
good-natured man on the whole, who could not quite
believe — because of the simplicity in his nature
— that he would be considered one of the damned entirely
without reason, he did indeed resolve to write nothing further
in the near future.

But
then came the time when he could no longer do otherwise.
And in the years 1620 to 1624, up to his death, he wrote
rapidly, one after another, a great number of his works, as for
instance: The Book of the Contemplative Life, De Signatura
Rerum, or Concerning the Birth and Designation of All
Beings, or the elucidation of the first book of Moses. But
the number of his works is rather large and in this connection,
many a reader may fare strangely. Some have said that Jacob
Boehme repeats himself again and again. It is true; one cannot
deny that certain things appear over and over again in
his writings. If, however, a person draws the conclusion
from this that you know the whole Jacob Boehme if you know a
few of his works, because he always repeats himself —
though we cannot simply contradict persons who say this —
it must be said that whoever contents himself with having read
one work of Jacob Boehme's and has no appetite to read the
other works also, does not understand much of Jacob Boehme. But
whoever takes the trouble to go through his other works will
not rest, in spite of all the repetitions, until he has
read even the very last ones.

If,
from this characterization of his nature, we try to
penetrate more into his train of thought, into the
spiritual nature of Jacob Boehme, it must be said that for
modern man, who lives only in the cultural life of our time,
much indeed must be unintelligible, not only in the
content of Jacob Boehme's works, but also in his whole manner
of presentation. At first the presentation appears
completely chaotic. To be sure, one becomes slowly accustomed
to it. But then there still remains for many persons something
that is a hard nut to crack. We find that he has very peculiar
definitions of words — quite unintelligible for the
modern mind. Thus we find that in his explanation of the
world he again and again uses words such as “salt,”
“mercury” and “sulphur.” And if he
wishes to analyse what “sul” signifies, what
“phur” signifies, and finds all sorts of deep
thoughts therein, then these modern minds must say to
themselves that one cannot do anything with this, for what can
be the significance of offering explanations about a universal
principle by explaining the syllables of a word
individually, such as “sul” and “phur”?
That is quite alien to the modern mind.

To
be sure, if a person enters further into the mind of Jacob
Boehme, he will find that Jacob Boehme clothes what he wishes
tó say in all kinds of alchemistic formulae. But only when
one penetrates through to what expresses itself livingly as the
spirit of Jacob Boehme in what he found available, only then
does one find that something entirely different lives in these
formulae from what we know today as scientific thinking, as
thinking with regard to world-conceptions, or any other
thinking.

What lives in Jacob Boehme's soul resembles most closely that
which has been characterized here in these lectures as the
first stage of a higher spiritual life, as the stage of
imaginative cognition. We have emphasized the fact that he who
ascends from ordinary life in the sense world comes, through a
special development of his soul, to the point where he
perceives a new world of pictures, of imaginations. And we have
stressed the fact — I beg you to call to mind precisely
the character of this discussion [See lecture by Rudolf Steiner
entitled: Die Wege der übersinnlichen
Erkenntnis. (Not translated.)] — that, when
the human being has brought it about that he does not only form
imaginations, but that pictures, imaginative conceptions,
shoot up out of the unknown depths of the soul-life and he
experiences a new world, then he who desires to ascend to new
cognition must make the firm resolution to suppress
completely this first flashing up of an imaginative world in
the soul and to wait until it rises up a second time from a
much deeper-lying world.

The
whole state of soul, the whole inner mood to which Jacob Boehme
comes is, therefore, most nearly comparable to that which meets
a person in his soul-life who ascends to supersensible
knowledge. Nowhere, to be sure, does it appear that something
like that which modern spiritual-science proclaims as its
conscious methods is already to be found in Jacob Boehme. But
whoever were to believe that all this appeared in Jacob Boehme
as if of its own accord would, nevertheless, be wrong. He
himself once said that he had striven unceasingly for the
spirit's — for God's — assistance, and that a
luminous, imaginative world resulted from this unceasing
striving.

Thus, we cannot say that he was simply a naive,
imaginatively cognizant person, but we must say that he
grasped naively at the means which lead the human being to the
height of imaginative cognition. It is to be assumed,
naturally, that such an imaginative force was in his soul. In
other words, he arrived at imaginative cognition by just the
same paths, only more quickly, more as a matter of course, than
one can arrive at it through such methods as are described in
the book Knowledgeof the Higher Worlds and Its
Attainment. Thus Jacob Boehme stands before us as an
imaginatively cognizant human being. But this imaginative
knowledge struggles to the surface with primal power, as if it
were a matter of course, as if borne by a strong inner
will.

Thus, we see this strong inner will, which cannot express
itself in external deeds — his humble occupation prevents
this — surrounding his soul like a flood, so that the
soul immerses itself in this flood. We see powerful pictures
being born out of this will, through which he tries to solve
the riddles of the universe. In Jacob Boehme, it is not so much
the individual results that matter, as this mood and
condition of his soul. And he feels that, in his
striving, he is driven to something which is not the ordinary
cognizing human ego, but which is connected with the forces
that bind the human being — out of the subconscious in
his soul, out of the depths of his soul — to the whole
cosmos; that is, to what lives and weaves outside in
nature.

The
human being who really has an earnest desire for knowledge
feels that there is not only something rational in the act of
cognition, but something that he achieves for himself through
suffering and pain, and through the overcoming of
suffering and pain. And he notices, when he tries to
penetrate into nature and existence with present-day, ordinary
means, how he really separates himself from nature and
existence through all such means. But when we expose forces in
our soul which rest otherwise in the subconscious, then we feel
that these are connected with nature and existence in
quite another, more intimate sense. In order to explain this, I
should like to draw upon the following.

It
is a well-known fact, and one hears it often related, that in
regions where an earthquake or some other elemental event is
imminent, certain animals flee from the locality of the
earthquake or some similar occurrence, or at least become
restless, so that they are like prophetic announcers of what is
to happen. We may say that the instinctive life of the animal
is more closely connected with what takes place outside in
nature than the whole state of soul of the human being. But in
the depths of the human soul, there lives something which is
not the same as the instinct of animals, but which is deeper
than this animal instinct, and which is also closely connected
with the forces of nature. And in descending into the depths of
his soul, Jacob Boehme felt himself more closely interwoven
with the forces of nature.

But
one thing stands out particularly. It has been emphasized
that only when that which appears as imaginations and an
imaginative world has been suppressed, extinguished, and then
lights up again as if of its own accord, — only then does
this second imaginative world have value. (As I said, I beg you
to call to mind the earlier discussions.) Now, it is most
singular if we compare the path of Jacob Boehme with this.

In the
year 1600 he experiences a re-birth, feels himself transported
into a spiritual world, into a “kingdom of joy.”
Then he continues to live in sober simplicity. For ten years it
is as if what he had experienced were submerged. Then it
emerges a second time in the year 1610. Did not then the path
which we represented as the right one appear as a natural
phenomenon in Jacob Boehme's soul? For us, it is this
that makes Jacob Boehme approach so closely that upon which we
ourselves have focused our attention as being the natural way
into the supersensible worlds. If we take this into account his
experience will not seem as strange to us as it may have
seemed at first sight. [See also:
RudolfSteiner—Kosmischcund menschlicheGeschichte,Vol. V, Lecture
3.(Not yet translated.)]

It
will have no value for the objective cognition of the sceptic,
to be sure, if one reflects profoundly on the combination out
of the syllables “sul” and “phur,” or
about other such things. But I beg you to call to mind what we
explained concerning human speech once on an earlier occasion
[See: Rudolf Steiner - Geisteswissenschaft und de
Sprache. (Not yet translated.)] — how we showed that
in the course of human evolution “speech” really
preceded abstract, conceptual thinking, and how Jean
Paul is entirely right when he emphasizes that the child learns
to think through speech, instead of forming speech through
thinking. Speech, therefore, is something more elementary,
primal than thinking. When we see how the whole of nature
arises again in our thoughts, then we feel how thought is
separated from the realities of nature by a world chasm.
But, when the sound as something more like the sounds in
nature — and, after all, speech was originally composed
of such sounds, — when the sound of speech is wrested
from the human soul, then something of the whole system of law
in the universe works into the depths of the soul. And then a
kind of echo in relation to nature tears itself loose in an
entirely different way from that occurring when something is
released out of thoughts as an echo.

A
soul of the present time no longer has any feeling for the
affinity of speech and sounds in nature. As a contemporary soul
one can only slowly struggle through to the feeling that in all
speech there is something which directly resembles an echo of
the impressions of the external world. In such a personality as
Jacob Boehme, who draws deeper forces from his soul with
elemental power, it is only natural that in this respect
also, in feeling also, as it were, he is carried back to
that impression of speech which was once characteristic of
humanity and which the child, more or less unconsciously, still
develops.

And
now if we extend what has just been set forth to include
the strange analyses concerning the joining together of
syllables into words, then we can understand that what nature
brings about in the human soul is only a feeling by means of
the sounds; that nature wishes to create her own language
through sound itself. Precisely because Jacob Boehme stood
closer to nature in his soul, he also lived more in speech than
in thought, and his whole philosophy is more a feeling with, a
sympathizing with, that which lives and weaves outside in
nature than any abstract grasping of things. What I mean
to say is that, when a person lets a thought of Jacob Boehme's
really have its effect on him, he feels as if the thought were
as akin to what Jacob Boehme observed as he himself is akin
only to that which he senses as some kind of taste, when he
also feels contact with nature.

Thus, does Jacob Boehme feel the contact with nature. He feels
in the inner being what weaves and works and lives
outside in nature. He lives nature's life with it, and in
his representations he gives, really, that wherein he
participates, so that one feels what he perceived vibrating in
his words. To him, therefore, words are something which he
feels especially to be like that which is the “How”
in nature itself. One does not have to ponder, therefore, over
the question whether such discussions as the
above-mentioned about “sul” and “phur”
mean anything particular in Jacob Boehme, but one should try to
re-experience in connection with this soul how it makes the
experience of the universe into the experience of the
soul and gives as its revelations that which the soul can
experience.

No
one understands Jacob Boehme who simply supposes that he
perceived thunder and lightning, clouds, or cloud
transformations, or the growth of grass like a modern
human being. A person understands him only if he knows that
with the flashing lightning, with the rolling thunder,
with the changing clouds something is transformed for his
soul-life, so that something takes place in his soul which
stands there as the solution of the corresponding riddle. Thus,
what takes place in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme a
riddle of his own experience.

And
now, if we look at him thus, we understand how he could wrestle
with a task which meets us elsewhere during his time also, and
which long occupied other spirits, even the greatest
spirit of recent times. This same sixteenth century, in which
occurred the birth of Jacob Boehme, gave birth to the Faust
riddle, which places next to the striving and struggling man
the enemy of man, who drags down man's striving nature into the
base, sensual — into that which Jacob Boehme's age called
“the

Devilish.” Poetically, Goethe still struggled with the
problem which places “evil” in the world structure.
Must not the human being ask again and again: How does it
come about that the irregular, the unsuitable, places itself
antagonistically in the harmonious universe, in the wise
guidance of the world? And the question of the origin of evil
lies in the riddle of Faust. It is really already in the book
of Job, but it appeared especially powerfully in the sixteenth
century.

In
what manner could this question appear before the mind of Jacob
Boehme?

We
need only to take a few words from the Dawn in Its
Ascent and we shall see at once how that which is elsewhere
a world problem becomes for Jacob Boehme at first an inner soul
problem. There he says approximately the following words: If an
understanding and thoughtful man shows himself anywhere in the
world, the Devil at once meddles with his soul and seeks to
drag his nature down into the vulgar, common, sensual, —
seeks to ensnare the man in pride and conceit.

Here we see at once how the problem is grasped by Jacob Boehme
as a soul problem. We see how he searches in the soul itself
for the power of evil, which interferes with the good soul
forces. And the question arises for him: What does the soul
have to do with the soul forces that strive towards evil? Thus
the problem of evil becomes for Jacob Boehme finally an inner
soul question. [See also: Rudolf Steiner,
Geisteswissenschaft als Forderung unserer Zeit; Vol.
VII, Das Böse im Lichte der Erkenntnis vom Geiste.
(Soon to be translated.)] But because for him soul and
universe correspond to each other, the soul at once
expands into a universe. And now the peculiar thing for him is
that the question of evil is transformed into an entirely
different question, into the question of human
consciousness — in fact, of all spiritual
consciousness, of the whole character of the life of
consciousness.

It
is difficult today with our current conceptions to
illuminate Jacob Boehme's soul life and what the cosmic
questions and their solutions became for him, and a person
cannot make himself very clear if he uses the words of Jacob
Boehme, because they are no longer current coin in our time. I
will try, therefore — entirely in the spirit
of Jacob Boehme, but with somewhat different words
— to approach what he wished to say about the
question of evil, which becomes with him a question concerning
the whole nature of spiritual consciousness in general.

Let
us once try to think how our consciousness works, what our
whole consciousness would be if we were not in a position to
hold fast in memory, as thought, what we once experienced in
our soul, in our consciousness. Let us try to think how our
consciousness would have to be something entirely different if
we were not capable of drawing up out of our memory what we
experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, years ago. The
whole content of consciousness rests on the fact that we can
remember past experience, and our consciousness does not
extend back beyond that point of time to which we can
remember. We began then to grasp ourselves as an
“ego,” to have the coherent thread of our
consciousness, to be at home in our soul life.

Upon what, therefore, does the whole nature of
consciousness depend? Upon the fact that we know: Now we
are at this moment experiencing something in our consciousness.
When we experience something, we are directly connected with
this experience. In the moment when we experience
something we are nothing else than our experience itself. A
person who visualizes a red colour is united with the
experience of it at the moment when he visualizes this red
colour. Whoever conceives an ideal is, at that moment, one with
the ideal. I le distinguishes himself only afterwards from his
experience, while before he was one with it. Thus our whole
consciousness is something that we first experienced and then
stored up as an objective thing in our inner soul life. Such
storing away in the objective makes our consciousness possible.
We could not develop any consciousness if everything that
we experienced were always forgotten — completely
removed. By placing our experience before ourselves as
counterpart (Gegenwurf), [The term Wurf is
almost untranslatable. It is apparently intended to
suggest the primordial source from which all that is
takes its rise. Gegenwurfis that which is
created by the Wurf, its counterpart.] as Jacob Boehme
says, — by confronting ourselves with it as with an
opposite — only thereby does our real consciousness
ignite. We must observe this in connection with the
simplest fact of our consciousness.

In
his clairvoyant contemplation Jacob Boehme extends this
experience, which any and every consciousness can have, over
all the world. He says: And if a Divine Being in the world had
once had the capacity only to live in Himself, but not to
confront Himself with His experience — as counterpart
— consciousness would never have come to be, even in a
Divine Being. But for the Divine Being the counterpart is the
world. Just as we confront ourselves with our
conceptions, just as we become conscious of ourselves
through the object, so the counterpart for Divine Consciousness
is the world. And everything that surrounds us Divine
Consciousness set out of Itself, in order to become aware
of Itself thereby, — just as we develop our
consciousness only when we set up our own experiences as
counterpart.

For
Jacob Boehme the grasping of this thought was not a theory, but
something that brought him satisfaction with regard to a
question which signified a matter of destiny for him —
the great Faust question. He could now say to himself:
“If I am carried back in thought into Divine
Consciousness prior to the world, as it were, this
Divine Consciousness could come to Itself, become real
consciousness, only by confronting Itself with the world, in
order to become aware of Itself through Its
counterpart.” Thus, everything that lives and
weaves and is took its rise from the Divine-Psychic, from a
Will of this Divine-Psychic, which developed the craving,
as Will, to become aware of Itself. And in that moment (this
now became clear to Jacob Boehme) when the Unitary
Consciousness set up Its counterpart and wanted to become
aware of Itself — that is, duplicated Itself, created, as
it were, the reflected image of Itself — It created this
reflected image in a variety, in the multiplicity of single
members, just as the single human soul does not have its life
only in single limbs, but in limbs that have a certain
independence, such as hand, and foot, and head. A person
does not get close to the reality of Jacob Boehme if he
describes him as a pantheist. He must go through the train of
thought in a similar way, must understand how Jacob Boehme
conceived everything that appears before us as a
“counterpart of the Godhead.”

To
the counterpart of the Godhead, which the Godhead set out of
Itself in order to become aware of Itself thereby, belongs also
the human being as he is. From this point of view of his. Jacob
Boehme says: Men direct their gaze upwards; see the stars, the
masses of clouds, the mountains and the plants, and would often
assume the existence of still another special region of the
Godhead. But I say to you, you unreasoning human being,
that you yourself belong to the counterpart of the Godhead; for
how could you sense anything and become aware of anything
of Divine Being in yourself if you had not flowed forth from
this Divine Being? You have sprung from this Divine Being. He
placed you opposite Himself, as He also gave birth to you out
of Himself, and you shall be buried in Him. And how could you
be raised from the dead if an alien Godhead stood confronting
you? How could you call yourself a child of God if you were not
one with the substance and being of God!

That he does not refer to any ordinary pantheism is
expressed by him through the fact that he says:
“The external world is not God; it will never in eternity
be called God, but a being in which God reveals Himself.
… If one says that God is all. that God is heaven and
earth and also the external world, it is true, for everything
has its origin and genesis in Him. But what can I do with such
a speech, which is no religion?”

One
cannot call him a pantheist. Just as the question
concerning the essential nature of the world is not, for
him, something artificially sought after, neither is that
which he gives himself as an answer to it. Rather is it
an experience for him. He felt the prerequisite conditions
determining his own consciousness and extended these over
Divine Consciousness, because he knew clearly that the nature
of his own capacity for consciousness was an echo of the
actualities of the world.

And
in the answer to the question of the soul and the Divine in the
soul he finds also the answer to the question concerning the
origin of evil. This is something exceedingly characteristic of
Jacob Boehme, which has again and again aroused the
admiration of profound thinkers. Thus, for instance,
Schelling was very significantly affected when he became aware
of the manner in which Jacob Boehme approached the question
concerning the significance of evil in the world, and
other thinkers of the nineteenth century also admired the
profundity of thought with which Jacob Boehme took hold of this
question.

One
may say, with regard to many persons who have sought an answer
to the question concerning the origin of evil, that they
searched for the primal cause of evil. It is characteristic of
Jacob Boehme that he went further than that point which,
according to the opinion of many people, is the sole and
only limit to which one can go. For where else should a person
go if he does not wish to stop at this primal cause? Jacob
Boehme goes beyond the primal cause when he wishes to solve the
question concerning the significance of evil. He goes to
that which he calls, significantly, not the primal cause, or
primal ground (Urgrund), but the groundlessness,
(Ungrund), and here we actually stand before an
experience of the human soul in Jacob Boehme which can be
admired in the highest degree if one has the requisite
organ.

Certainly, the ordinary soul which has its roots in the
modern world conception does not, perhaps, possess this
organ; but one can have this organ which feels admiration when,
in Jacob Boehme, the transition is made from the primal ground
to the groundlessness. And, after all, it is really something
like the egg of Columbus, something exceedingly simple. For, at
the moment when Jacob Boehme had solved the world riddle for
himself in the way we have just described — when it was
clear to him that there is a relationship between God and the
world like that between the soul and the limbs of the body
— then he could also say to himself: When the world came
into existence as counterpart of the Godhead, there appeared in
this counterpart the dividedness, the differences among
the limbs, as we should say. (He did not use these words, but
we wish to characterize according to the essence rather than
the words, for we shall, thereby, come closer to understanding
him.) The dividedness of the single limbs of the body
confronting the single soul made its appearance. Is not every
single limb of the body good with regard to functions of the
soul? Can we not say that the right hand is good, the left hand
is good, everything is good in as much as it serves the
functions of the soul? But cannot the right hand, because of
its relative independence, indeed just because of its
excellence, injure the left hand?

Here we have the independence of the corporeal, that which
needs to have “no ground” (cause), set up against
that which constitutes harmony. We see this placed in the
primal ground (cause), which simply results from the fact that
from the “primal ground” we pass on to the
“groundlessness.” Just as we do not need to seek in
light the cause of darkness, so we do not need to seek in good
the cause of evil. But as the world proves itself, for Jacob
Boehme, to be the counterpart of the Godhead, the possibility
arises in this world of dividedness for the individual
limbs to work against each other, in that, because they must
have their independence for the sake of the purpose of the
world — according to the goal-seeking character of the
world — they must also develop this independence.

Thus, for Jacob Boehme, evil does not have its roots in that
which one explains, but in that which we find as
“groundlessness” without the need for
explaining it. But the latter appears thereby, as if of its own
accord, as a counterpart of good. And now evil, the unsuitable,
the harmful in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme itself a
counterpart, in contrast to good, — just as we become
aware of ourselves through contact with an object. We move
along in space; we do not think of ourselves. But we begin at
once to think of ourselves if, for instance, we knock our head
against a window. Then we become aware of ourselves through the
counterpart, through the object. Just as Jacob Boehme confronts
consciousness with the counterpart, just as he experiences
himself through the counterpart, so the good, the
suitable, the advantageous and useful becomes aware of itself,
for Jacob Boehme, through the fact that it has to preserve
itself in the presence of the harmful and unsuitable. It
becomes aware of itself in that “evil” became the
counterpart of good, like the objects that are experienced
through collision with the external world.

Thus Jacob Boehme sees in good the force which
assimilates its counterpart, just as man, in his memory,
assimilates more and more what he himself first set out of his
consciousness. We find thus a constant absorption of evil and,
thereby, an enriching of the good with the evil. And as
darkness relates itself to light, in that light shines into
darkness and thereby first becomes visible, so does good
first become effective by working into evil and relating itself
to evil as light to darkness. Just as light graduates to the
different colours through darkness and could not appear as
light if darkness were not opposed to it, so can good perform
its world-function only by experiencing itself through its
counterpart, through evil.

Thus Jacob Boehme looks into the world. He sees the good
effective in such a way that it finds itself confronted by
evil, but that it takes evil into its own domain, absorbs it,
so to speak. Thus a pre-earthly occurrence appears for Jacob
Boehme in such a way that he says to himself: The Deity once
placed other spiritual beings opposite Himself. These were,
like our present nature at a later stage, a counterpart of the
Deity. Thus these beings were already a counterpart of the
Deity, whereby the Deity achieved consciousness of Himself. But
they behaved towards the Deity like the limbs that turn
against their own body.

Thereby the Being Lucifer came into existence for Jacob
Boehme. What is Lucifer for him? He is the Being who, after the
counterpart was created, used the separateness, the
multiplicity, to rebel against his Creator as independent
counterpart. Thus, in the forces of the world which differ from
and struggle against one another Jacob Boehme finds that which
must be, but which contributes to the general evolution,
nevertheless, by being absorbed in the course of development.
In the same way he also conceives that all deeds of the
opponent of the Gods — in order that the deeds of the
Deity Himself may come to realization so much the more
powerfully through the counterpart — are absorbed by the
Deity, and that the self-realization of the Deity becomes only
so much the more glorious through the forces which the opponent
develops.

Into the depths of the world Jacob Boehme pursues the thought
which extends the experiencing of consciousness to the cosmic
experience of the origin and primal state of evil. And he puts
into a simple formula — not what he gave theoretically,
we must say, as the solution of the cosmic riddles, but what he
experienced, — into the formula: No
“Yes” without a
“No,” for the
“Yes” must first experience itself through its
counterpart, through the “No.” “No Yes
without a No” is the simple formula
into which Jacob Boehme brought the whole problem of evil. And
it is not a theoretical formula, but in this philosophy, there
lies something like a most primal, most elemental
experience.

For
to know that there is no Yes without a No, that evil is
absorbed by good and contributes to the evolution of the world,
— that may yet be nothing. But it is something else to be
a struggling soul, a soul that experiences pain and suffering,
temptations and seductions, and to say to oneself:
“All of this must be present, and although it is present
I can procure for myself out of my living philosophical word
— not by theorizing — the certainty and the
consolation and the hope that the best in me will find the
possibility of overcoming what is only the counterpart,
the “No,” through the primal, through the
Primordial Impulse (Wurf), [The term Wurf is
almost untranslatable. It is apparently intended to
suggest the primordial source from which all that is
takes its rise. Gegenwurfis that which is
created by the Wurf, its counterpart.] through the
“Yes.” And no matter how much I become entangled in
evil, and no matter how small the ray of light is that extends
over it, — I can and may hope for liberation, so that the
good in me and not the evil will win the victory!

If
such a philosophy passes over into certainty of
redemption, then it is something which is, in this
manner, connected with the personality, to be sure, but which
has with this character of personality at the same time
general human significance. If a person allows this to work
upon his soul, he will gladly go on from this struggling soul
which rises into the cold abstractions of the
“Yes” and “No” in order to acquire
therefrom the warmest soul content and the warmest soul
experiences — then he will gladly go on from this soul,
which gains through struggle confidence in its world
conception, to the lonely man in Goerlitz who had no
opportunity to found a school, for the time which men, under
other circumstances, spend in spiritual things he had to spend
in making shoes ... he had to gain the time by strenuous effort
for his numerous works. Such a person will gladly go to the man
whose books reveal how he struggled with language because his
external education was so limited, but whose teachings,
nevertheless, were disseminated and spread abroad after his
death; who sat on his shoemaker's bench and had only few
friends to whom he could open his heart. He had friends, it is
true, to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small.

One
sees him thus in his loneliness and feels as if a
necessary connection existed herein. Just as one can
think of Giordano Bruno only as journeying through the
world, moving from land to land in order to proclaim something
about the world as if with trumpet tone — just as one
feels in him, who enters into the multiplicity of phenomena,
that this journeying belongs to this world conception —
so does one feel in the other case that this lonely shoemaker
experienced something which could be experienced only in
such a way that it took place as if in a solitary dialogue with
the spirits of existence — in this solitary seership
which we characterized at the beginning.

If
we feel thus, then the sentiment grows in us, with regard to
what the human being needs in order to solve the riddles of the
world in a thoughtful, feeling way, that the greatest which the
human being can experience in the world is independent of place
and time, is subject only to the human soul's capacity for
profound meditation, and that the soul can undertake the
greatest world-migrations, the migrations into the
spirit-regions, everywhere and always. Then there rings out to
us from Jacob Boehme's soul, and touches our understanding,
that which characterizes his world conception in such a
significant expression when he says:

To whom time is like eternity
And eternity like time,
He is freed from all strife.

This does not characterize his world conception in a
theoretical respect, but it characterizes what his world
conception really came to be through the fact that he was such
a very special human being. For we have been able to emphasize
that through his whole being he was more intimately connected
with nature than the normal human being, — that he
experienced the weaving and activity of nature in his own
soul experiences. This leads us to sense a certain necessity in
a designation which Jacob Boehme's friends gave him. They gave
him a happy designation. For let us just consider the
following:

When there was already a widely diffused, wonderfully
detailed science over in the East, in the Orient, whose
wisdom we admire if we learn to know it, we still find the very
simplest spiritual culture on Central European soil. We find
that something lives in all the souls of Central Europe
which is like an intimate connection of the forces in the
depths of the soul with the forces of nature and the
nature-beings, and that the people threw twigs on the ground
and saw in the “Runes” which took form all kinds of
riddles which they sought to solve. These human beings
were decipherers of “Rune riddles.” And of all that
speaks out of the souls of the human beings in the forests of
ancient Germania about what lives in nature, about what rustles
through the trees, or lives mysteriously in human souls
themselves, — we feel as if something of all this
were active in Jacob Boehme's soul.

Then something in Jacob Boehme may well become
comprehensible to us which would otherwise be the most
difficult thing for us to comprehend today. We are not forcing
things if we compare with the picture of the decipherer of
runic riddles, who solves all sorts of riddles through the
twigs which have been thrown on the ground and claims to
perceive the revelations of the Divinity Himself — if we
compare with this the way, for instance, in which Jacob Boehme
sets up the syllables “sul” and “phur”
runically out of his relationship with the feeling for speech,
and wants to solve world riddles thereby. Here he appears
to us like a last offspring of the forests of ancient
Germania, and we understand why his friends gave him the
name “Philosophus Teutonicus.” This includes,
however, his significance for the coming times.

We
look towards him and see how he struggled with the most
exciting problems that can play into the human soul, how he
arrived at peace in this struggle, and how his last words:
“I enter into Paradise” were the seal to
consistency of soul, to soul-practice. It is this that led him
to peace of the soul. A breath of faith lives in all his books,
and from this point of view Jacob Boehme can have significance
for us and for all times. When it comes to the practical
life consequence of a philosophy, this “Philosophus
Teutonicus” will always be a dominant influence as
regards that which he can really be for the soul if it becomes
familiar with him. [Compare: Rudolf Steiner — Die
Rätsel der Philosophie, Vol. I.]

His
adversaries sometimes make a strange impression —
beginning in the year 1684, when the first rather strong
refutation of Jacob Boehme by Kallo appeared, up until
our time, when we also have a writing against Jacob Boehme, by
a Leipzig scholar of the past century, Dr. Harles. It seems
rather peculiar how Harles wishes to show that Jacob Boehme did
nothing but warm up old alchemistic things, and then says that,
after he had often tormented himself for days in order to
present Jacob Boehme in this way, he was often glad when he
could approach Matthias Claudius in the evening in order to
find recuperation and edification in his words, after he had
had to concern himself thus with Jacob Boehme throughout the
day. And he desires also for his readers that they not allow
themselves to be beguiled by the glistening and glimmering
formulae of Jacob Boehme, but that they also take refuge in the
simple and naive Matthias Claudius, whose gift to the soul is
such that the soul does not have to seek its salvation in being
elevated to the highest heights of spiritual life.

It
may be that this Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme,
had to take refuge in Matthias Claudius in order to escape from
the glistening, high-flown formulae of Jacob Boehme, and
that he could find peace in Claudius, in contrast to his
experience with Jacob Boehme. Only, it makes a strange
impression on one who knows that Matthias Claudius
himself took refuge, after he had achieved what Dr. Harles
found in his works, in some one who not only knew Jacob Boehme,
but even translated him — in Saint Martin, who was a
faithful pupil of Jacob Boehme! Thus it is very good not only
to know wherein Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme,
sought edification, but also to know wherein Matthias Claudius
sought his edification!

But
the world conception of Jacob Boehme is one that is suited to
lead beyond contradictions, if only one does not stop at it.
The whole nature of the lectures that have been given here has
shown that within the world conception which is
represented here we should not remain standing at any one
phenomenon, but that whatever of the spiritual world can
be grasped directly through the forces of our age should
be grasped. Certainly Jacob Boehme remains a significant
personality, a star of the first magnitude in the
spirit-heavens of humanity — yet no one will stop at him.
The representations of spiritual-science which are given today
are, therefore, by no means given from the standpoint of Jacob
Boehme, but from that of our age, and the next time we
shall show, in contrast, what an entirely modern spirit
[Rudolf Steiner, Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers
der Gegenwart (Herman Grimm) und die
Geistesforschuug.] has to say.

But
Jacob Boehme becomes still more interesting if we transport
ourselves into his spirit-nature — which stands upright
in simplicity and solitude, and takes flight with his soul into
the highest region of clairvoyance, — and if we find how
this spirit-nature could spread peace over Jacob
Boehme's soul, which can subsequently be felt by all who
approach him with understanding or, at least, seeking for
understanding. For this reason, intellectual
characterizations will not come close to the reality of Jacob
Boehme, but only such characterizations as endeavour to feel
what a human being like Jacob Boehme felt, what streamed forth
from him — as, for instance, in the three lines which I
have cited.

And
only then can the words with which I essayed to
characterize Jacob Boehme gain their significance if
those present feel that they were not said in order to
culminate in a theory or theoretical characterization of Jacob
Boehme, but to culminate in this: that, when we are
directly confronted by the personality of Jacob Boehme,
something streams out from it — and streams out so much
the more warmly and intensively the more we learn to know it
— which can sum up what has been said in words
designating his peace, his serenity:

To whom time is like eternity
And eternity like time,
He is freed from all strife.